"—and there it is!"
The host's voice was practically a scream over the comms.
"Rex Arken lands a third-link burst — confirm the frame count! That's perfect timing!"
The Gate core shimmered overhead in pulses of unstable light, distorting the terrain around it in fractured geometry — grass turned to steel shards, then to liquid obsidian, all under Rex's boots.
He never stumbled.
Rex twirled his spear once and plunged it into the fractured ground, stabilizing the instance.
Three other raiders stood behind him, winded but grinning.
One raised a fist toward the camera drone.
The other slumped down, laughing.
"That's what I'm talking about!" Rex shouted, yanking his spear free as the boss's body disintegrated into system light.
"That's a clean clear, ladies and gentlemen. Tell the Council we're still better than the spreadsheets."
The chat feed surged.
▻ CLUTCH KING ARKEN 🔥🔥
▻ HOW DOES HE DO IT WTF
▻ SPEAR GOD. MARRY ME.
▻ ACTUAL BALANCE PRODIGY
▻ GUILDMASTER WHEN??
Rex turned toward the camera drone and flashed that effortless half-smile he'd trained himself to give after every win.
Charisma was part of the meta now.
He'd mastered that too.
His raid comm lit up again — this time, the holostream overlay cutting in with a floating banner:
[REX ARKEN – RANKED #8 GLOBAL INITIATOR]
[SPONSORED BY: VANTEC ARMORY | STREAMLEAP | NEONBYTE]
He should've felt amazing.
But his eyes flicked back to the chat — still blazing like fire — and caught a comment that stalled something in his breath:
▻ still not as fast as the Ashwood ghost
Just one.
Not bolded.
Not repeated.
Not even trending.
But enough.
Rex's fingers clenched around the haft of his spear. The stream overlay caught the twitch — minor, nothing fans would notice.
But his teammates did.
"Something wrong, Rex?"
"Nothing," he said smoothly, shaking out his hands. "Just lag."
The system registered zero lag.
He turned from the camera, rolling his shoulder once, resetting his stance.
The Gate began its post-clear collapse. Data particles fluttered around his feet like golden dust.
Behind his smile, behind the roar of compliments and sponsorship pings, behind the clean kill…
There was one name he couldn't forget.
Kael.
The studio was all chrome and clean light — a perfect contrast to the raw chaos of the raid he'd just cleared.
Rex sat in the center chair, posture perfect, jacket half-unzipped to show the Vantec crest on his undersuit. The camera ring hovered like a silent predator. Everything was in 6K resolution, down to the faint twitch in his jaw.
The host, a soft-voiced woman with lacquered lashes and a surgically perfect smile, leaned forward.
"Another win, another record time. And still undefeated this cycle. Rex — the numbers are speaking. Is balance… becoming cool again?"
Rex laughed on cue.
"Balance never stopped being cool. People just forgot how to use it."
A ripple of laughter from the studio techs. Canned, but warm.
The host's grin sharpened.
"Still, not everyone's using it the way it was meant to be. We've all seen the underground chatter — 'miracle timings,' silent clears, 'patch-glitchers' pulling off what should be impossible."
Rex's smile didn't flicker.
But his heartbeat did.
"You're talking about mids?" he asked, voice casual.
The host tilted her head, faux-innocent.
"I'm talking about anomalies. There's a whisper going around — some raiders are skipping the system entirely. Not learning it. Not mastering it. Just… bending it."
The camera zoomed slightly — a slow, subtle push-in.
Rex leaned forward just enough to fill the frame.
"I don't care what whispers say," he said, steady now. "Balance isn't a cheat code. You want results? You train. You fail. You get back up."
Pause.
Then, as if offhand:
"And if someone's skipping that process? They're not stronger than me. They're just not going to last."
The silence that followed was intentional.
The host gave a single approving nod, tapped a hidden glyph on her chair, and the outro sequence flared to life — his face refracted through stylized light overlays and booming synth chords.
[REX ARKEN — THE FUTURE OF FLAWLESS]
[STREAMLEAP PRESENTS: THE BALANCE WARRIOR]
Off-camera, Rex stood, removed his mic, and exhaled.
His assistant approached with a datapad — raid summaries, stream metrics, sponsor breakdowns.
He didn't look.
He just asked, under his breath:
"That Ashwood node. You said it was a glitch, right?"
The assistant hesitated.
"Council says it's flagged as a silent clear. No active investigation."
"Pull the logs anyway."
"But—"
"Now."
The apartment wasn't loud.
Rex preferred silence when no one was watching.
Too many raiders kept their public face on at home — streamed every thought, let followers count their workouts, their calories, their breakdowns. Not him.
Rex trained. Rex killed. Rex won.
Then Rex disappeared.
The screen flickered as the old file loaded.
Year-stamped 2.4 cycles ago.
Node: THORNFELL – Tier C+
Squad: Five.
Four were downed by minute six.
The last one — younger, raw, full of fire but no precision — was Rex.
And the one who saved him?
Was Kael.
The recording glitched slightly at the start — formatting was older — but the body of it was clean.
Kael moved through the ruin corridor like a man who didn't need to check corners. Not because he was reckless… but because he already knew.
Rex had watched this run fifty times.
He still didn't understand how Kael knew that mimic was waiting behind the third pillar, or how he redirected the cooldown window on the squad's shatter shield mid-cast.
And he definitely didn't understand this part:
[Timestamp 07:18]
Rex is trapped in a bleed field. His HP drops in seconds. The healer is down.
He yells something — can't hear it anymore, the audio's corrupted.
Kael doesn't hesitate. He doesn't even look.
He just throws a glyph — a single, off-meta flicker cast — into the field.
The field collapses.
The cooldown resets.
Rex lives.
"That wasn't luck," Rex muttered to himself.
He'd said that line every time.
Only now… it meant something different.
Back then, Kael was a C+ mid. No sponsors. No followers. Barely enough resources to keep his license valid.
And he saved Rex like it was just part of the job.
"You didn't cheat back then," Rex whispered.
He paused the file on Kael's face.
Calm. Focused. No cracks on his arms. No glow. No desperation.
Just certainty.
Then, the whisper — barely audible, from some broken speaker in the corner of the room:
▻ The system blinked.
Rex turned toward it, frowning.
Nothing there. Just silence.
And Kael's frozen face on the screen.
The Dominion Tower's 6th tier briefing suite had no windows.
That was the point.
Meetings here didn't need outside context — just output, delivery, and silence.
Rex sat across from Commander Lioren, a tactical director who rarely left the war-room unless someone wanted to be reminded they were a weapon, not a person.
Lioren wasn't old, but his eyes made people think he was.
"You did well this cycle," the commander said, sliding a single display across the table.
"Metrics show your raid drew 4.3 million concurrent. Highest this season. Guild Council noticed."
Rex didn't smile.
"Appreciate it."
Lioren waited a beat.
Then, without changing tone:
"Unmarked node was cleared in Ashwood."
The words were simple.
Not a question.
Not an accusation.
Just… fact.
Rex didn't blink.
"An off-grid run?"
"No system log. No kill confirmation. No tagged survivor data. Just… cleared."
Lioren tapped the display. The screen showed a blank spot where a boss's body should have been.
"Not Dominion work. Not Accord. Not Choir."
"So the Council flagged it."
"They're not naming it publicly. Yet."
Rex leaned back in his chair.
"And what do they want from me?"
Lioren smiled — not kindly.
"You already know."
He turned the screen again. This time, it showed Rex — mid-spear burst, mid-victory cry, the golden poster boy of balance.
"You're stable. Visible. Trusted. You don't glitch. You don't bend."
"We need that right now."
Another pause.
Longer.
Then Lioren said it.
Quiet. Precise.
"We need a clean answer to whatever that thing was."
Rex's jaw tightened.
"It wasn't a thing."
The commander didn't blink.
"You're sure?"
"If you want me to be your answer…"
"…then stop pretending you don't know the question."
Lioren stared at him a moment longer.
Then slid the screen away.
No anger.
Just confirmation.
"Understood."
And the meeting ended.
The room was dark.
Not off — just quiet.
Screens lined the curved wall like teeth in a jaw, each one flickering with system data. Nodes. Pings. Combat overlays. Sponsor dashboards.
But Rex had them all off.
Except one.
The oldest.
A standalone relic of a server partition that technically no longer existed.
It hummed faintly — always had. That's how he knew it was still connected. Still hiding.
Still useful.
Rex keyed in the archive chain manually.
No voice input.
No retinal scan.
Too risky.
Too traceable.
He didn't want the system knowing he was looking at Kael Soren.
The name didn't come up.
It never did.
Too many wipes. Too many reassignments. The system treated Kael like a software error now — an unsolvable variable flagged for silence.
But the logs?
They were still there.
Fragmented.
Infected.
But breathing.
First entry:
[NODE: GLASSHAVEN TIER B+]
[SYSTEM GLITCH DETECTED: 004-C]
[RECOVERY STAMP: "SOREN-K | TIMESTAMP ERROR // PATCH APPLIED"]
Second entry:
[NODE: GREYSTONE VAULT]
[DEATH CONFIRMED – ALLIES LOST – RAID FAILURE]
[ERROR: TIMESTAMP INVERSION DETECTED]
[SYSTEM COMMENT: "HOW?"]
Third entry:
No metadata.
Just video.
Short.
Looped.
It showed Kael standing at the edge of a collapsing Gate, glyphs crawling like living fractures along his forearms.
He didn't move.
Didn't blink.
Then — in the final three seconds — his eyes flickered white, and the entire battlefield reset.
Rex sat back.
He didn't breathe for a moment.
Then whispered:
"You're still alive."
He leaned forward, loaded a fourth log. This one was corrupted beyond playback, but the audio still ran beneath the static.
A child's voice — filtered, echoed, but distinct.
Familiar.
"Papa, it's glowing again."
Rex's expression cracked.
Not rage.
Not fear.
But something far sharper.
Jealousy.